WASHINGTON (AP) — Voters threw their support behind abortion rights in Ohio, Virginia and elsewhere as Democrats look to springboard off those wins by using the issue to drive turnout and shape next year’s races for the White House, Congress and other elections.
Ohio offered the clearest snapshot on Tuesday of the issue’s salience more than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court ended the nationwide right to abortion. Voters in the increasingly Republican-leaning state resoundingly approved an amendment to the state constitution to protect access to abortion services.
Democrats also harnessed the issue in Virginia, riding it to retake control of the Legislature, and in Kentucky, giving Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear a second term after he made abortion rights central to his campaign in the deeply Republican state.
Election night was an energizing moment for Democrats hoping abortion rights will pull voters to the polls in the 2024 presidential election. The campaigning and results for the amendment in Ohio, the only state with an abortion question on the ballot this year, is a precursor to similar ballot measures expected to be put to a vote in several states next year. That includes Arizona and Nevada, which play pivotal roles in the White Housr race.
Abortion also will sit at the center of a slate of state Supreme Court races in 2024.
For the anti-abortion movement, the latest post-Roe defeat came after its scattershot messaging struggled to win over voters in a state that has become a testing ground. The scope of the victory for abortion access in Ohio suggests that a significant number of Republicans voted in favor of the amendment, signaling deep divisions in the party over their next steps.
Elisabeth Smith, director of state policy and advocacy at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the anti-abortion movement is “on their heels” after turning to misinformation and fearmongering in Ohio in a losing cause.
“It’s become clear that the majority of Americans support abortion rights and want to see abortion remain legal and accessible, and the anti-abortion side knows that,” Smith said.
According to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of more than 94,000 voters, 63% of voters in the 2022 midterm elections said abortion should be legal in most or all cases. About one-third of voters said it should be illegal in all or most cases.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America, said Ohio’s results “serve as a warning sign for the GOP heading into 2024” and “proved this is not a formula for success for the GOP.”
“The true lesson from last night’s loss is that Democrats are going to make abortion front-and-center throughout 2024 campaigns,” Dannenfelser said in a statement. “The GOP consultant class needs to wake up. Candidates must put money and messaging toward countering the Democrats’ attacks or they will lose every time.”
Anti-abortion groups said the outcome was fueled by millions in campaign donations that abortion-rights supporters poured into the Ohio race, including large donations from out-of-state groups.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which advocates for abortion rights, spent more than $9 million on races in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia this year, with over $6 million of that going to Ohio, said the group’s chief political and advocacy officer, Deirdre Schifeling.
The messaging problem for anti-abortion groups goes deeper than their loss in Ohio.
In Virginia, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin tried to rally voters behind GOP legislative candidates by staking out what he and other Republicans felt was a middle-ground approach: a proposal to ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy with exceptions for rape, incest and situations where the mother’s life was at risk.
Youngkin pitched his “reasonable limits” as an alternative to the complete abortion bans or six-week bans in effect in some Republican-controlled states, and many GOP candidates in swing districts publicly supported the proposal.
